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Obama Wants Broadband, Computers Part of Stimulus
damn_registrars writes "President-elect Barack Obama announced in his radio address that his administration's economic stimulus package will include investing in computers and broadband for education. 'To help our children compete in a 21st century economy, we need to send them to 21st century schools.'
He also said it is 'unacceptable' that the US ranks 15th in broadband adoption." No doubt with free spyware and internet filtering. You know... for the kids.
It would be great if the local cable or phone company could run their lines just 1 block further from my nearest neighbor so I could get broadband.
Maybe Obama can make it happen!
Or Obama can help find where that 200 billion dollars went.
http://www.newnetworks.com/ShortSCANDALSummary.htm
Posts not to be taken literally. Almost everything is sarcasm.
You can't pay money to Intel, AMD, ATI, Dell or Microsoft without buying some hardware to Asian manufacturers because this is their business model to have manufactures in Asia. In today's world, it is hard to stimulate one country's economy without stimulating another one. There are some fields where it is possible (construction, restaurants...) but most are tied to foreign manufacturers.
Note that if giving job to China is an issue, one could prefer Taiwanese makers. I believe the difference is more important than it seems : one is a democracy, the other is not.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
exactly. but i remember hearing a story in the late 90s about the guy who founded Qwest was heir to a railroad company or something. basically, he sold off all the land around the tracks except for a certain number of feet on either side of the tracks. the trains were then outfitted with something that would automatically lay fiber.
this could be total crap, but i don't know.
"If for any reason you're not satisfied with our service, I hate you."
Well, despite being an Obama supporter (as am I), Taco is being pragmatic. Eric Holden could be his Attorney General, and he's all for net censorship. Plus this is the Democrats we're talking about; the old guard is salivating at the prospect of getting all their old nanny state legislation back on the plate.
----- Documentation is worth it just to be able to answer all your mail with 'RTFM' - Alan Cox.
Have them log into Monster.com, et al, and see what the salaries are for various fields, including jobs for those with a "mere diploma", and they will become more interested in College Prep and getting good grades.
No offense, but if you think that you can do Math on a calculator, your arguements for better education are kinda weakened. Calculators (yes even graphing ones) are a way to get around the tedium of simple arithmetic, a way to skip past the dark ages and get to the meat of critical, logical thinking.
I analyze water flow patterns as it relates to insurance risk for a living... a mathematical job to be sure. When calculating the trajectory of a projected river overflow, I grab my scientific calculator, and I think back in sympathy for my 4th grade self, who was tortured by moronic ciriculum focused on creating mindless times table memorization, which I could not do...
The main advantage humans have over other animals is that our history and our technology make it possible to learn in one lifetime what could not otherwise be possible in a hundred lifetimes. "Back to basics" is how humanity self-destructs. Give them a pile of computers, have them teach the teacher.
I've always wondered if there was some way that consumers could "get back" at the telecoms for sucking so hard.
Can someone file a class action lawsuit or something along those lines for the telecoms failing to serve the taxpayer/consumer despite being given so much aid from the government? Maybe throw in some analogy of how the banks over-sold the consumers with loans which led to a real estate crash and how the telecoms are over-selling the consumers with bandwidth which could potentially lead to an infrastructure crash. Add in a last quip about how their lazyness is what is causing the whole discussion of all protocols/websites/whatevers being equal in the idea of net neutrality and how if they just did their jobs the way they were supposed to the first time.
Could solve all our problems in one fell swoop!
Not sure about trains outfitted with automatic fiber laying machinery, but I know about specially made train cars that lay fiber. The nice thing about railroads and fiber is that at the turn of last century, railroads were giving large swaths of right of way for running tracks from town to town. So the railroads usually connect towns together, the same towns that are perhaps wanting digital connectivity. Also, many lines used to have multi track routes, and these have been reduced to reduce maintenane and then you have wide areas where you can lay fiber without much fear of running into many obstacles. This allows easier connections of towns by running cables along the railroad right of way.
Tonights forecast: Dark. Continued dark throughout most of the evening, with some widely-scattered light towards morning
No, I believe you basically heard correctly. I remember that being one of Qwest's competitive advantages at the time they got started. When everyone else was stuck negotiating for rights to use other people's land to place their fiber cabling, Qwest could usually just use the "right of way" land along the sides of the train tracks instead.
I think in the end though, it didn't change much of anything for the "end user/customer". Eventually, the big telcos all found ways to get things cabled up where they wanted to cable them up. Qwest might have gotten it done for less money initially, but they all have similar costs of operation and pricing models today.
A lot of the kids i went to high school with dropped out of school to take up jobs in construction with their parents (whom are only legal since their kids were born here) and typically sent back half of their income to their families across the border. One 16 year old kid i knew was on our track team and worked whatever the maximum number of hours a week you can at that age, and sent all but $100 a week (also about 50%) back to his family. $1000/wk for construction seems a little high. I know drywallers get paid about $20 an hour to do out of town work (dallas to san antonio) but $1000 a week? That seems a little high, is he a bilingual foreman or something? $600 a month may be all they can afford to send after rent, car payment, and gas for their truck (though gas prices have dropped recently). That's still $7,200 a year, plus whatever he spends in mexico while visiting family and buying them gifts there. Sorry to substantiate using my real life experience vs. your article you read in a magazine.
moox. for a new generation.
>Shuffle it though an inefficient bureaucracy .
Wait, so AT&T and Comcast are efficient non-bureaucracies? Hahaha. Sounds like you've never worked for a big business.
Sounds like you've never worked for - or intimately with - the Federal Government. Compared to that institution, Comcast, AT&T, IBM, and even GM are nimble and highly responsive entities!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The exact issue is that the school system is modeled after the one room schoolhouse. The entire concept of grades K-12 needs to be thrown out, and instead just have each student advance in each subject at his/her own pace. In this way, a student who is good in English but needs math help does not get held back or even looked at strangely.
Every student will have strengths and weaknesses, so it should be the norm to be several "grades" higher in one or two subjects, and possibly one or two grades lower in one or two subjects. When there is no stigma to having difficulty with a given subject, students will no longer have to hide the fact, and their needs can be addressed.
With this sort of system, the school system can finally improve. Throwing more money at a system that is clearly broken will not help, but replacing the system with something that will work and then moving students into that new system WOULD.
It is a sad thing when most people are more willing to replace an old but working computer than they are to replace a clearly broken system. The same applies to Social Security, health care, and everything else. Everyone keeps trying to fix something that is broken beyond repair instead of trying to figure out what to replace these old broken systems with.